


Blue as the Deepest Sea

by gingasaur



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid Fusion, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 03:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11049915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingasaur/pseuds/gingasaur
Summary: “A girl washed up on shore while you were gone.”





	Blue as the Deepest Sea

**Author's Note:**

> "I can't believe this is a sentence I'm thinking but Jadzia would be a beautiful mermaid." - Kristen, 2016
> 
> Title from the the fable, naturally.

Odo tells her as soon as she’s off the dock: “A girl washed up on shore while you were gone.”

“ _What?_ ” Kira starts up the stairs into the castle at a run. “From a wreck?”

“There’s been no sign of one,” Odo says. “Which I find odd.”

Kira smiles down at him from higher up the staircase. “A human being washes up on our shores and you’re suspicious.”

“With Lord Dukat breathing down our necks, I’m suspicious of everything,” Odo says.

“You think she’s a plant?” Kira asks.

“No injuries and no debris accompanying her,” Odo says. “There’s something off, regardless of the reason.”

“I think we can handle one girl, even if she is a plant,” Kira says.

“I just want you to keep it in mind.”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

But for now, Queen Nerys has someone to welcome to her kingdom.

\---

“Uninjured?!” Julian asks, aghast. “She slept for two days! Not to mention her inability to speak.”

She’s not so much a girl as she is a young woman, not any older than Kira if she had to guess. She watches from the bed as the both of them talk about her, taking a spoonful of soup every now and then. Even if she isn’t speaking, her gaze is steady and inquisitive, perfectly aware.

“No one’s rendered mute from nothing,” Julian says, lowering his voice. “Something happened to her, and whatever it was, it had to have been catastrophic.”

The woman raises the bowl to her mouth and tilts her head back, draining out the rest of the soup. For a move as undignified as this, she still makes it look graceful, her hands gently tipping the bowl like a cup of tea.

“But otherwise, is she okay?” Kira asks.

“Seems to be,” Julian answers. “She hasn’t indicated any pain, and she’s eating.”

The bowl returns to the tray across the young woman’s lap, and she leans back against the pillows and sighs.

“Did you enjoy the soup?” Kira asks, approaching the bed. She’s a little nervous; she’s still in her uniform, and she doesn’t want to appear threatening.

The woman doesn’t seem bothered at all. She smiles at Kira and nods.

Kira smiles in return. “You can have more, if you’d like.”

The woman shakes her head, but mouths, “Thank you.”

So, she does speak their language. That’s as good a place as any to start.

“Well, I’m sure our doctor has already introduced himself to you,” Kira says, taking the tray and the bowl and setting them atop a dresser. “I’m Kira, but everyone here just calls me Nerys.”

“That would be _Queen_ Kira Nerys,” Julian chimes in.

Kira glares at him; it’s still a little embarrassing, somehow, to call herself a queen. It feels strange, like it’s supposed to belong to someone else.

But hearing that she’s in the presence of royalty, the woman’s eyes light up, and she takes one of Kira’s hands. She stares so intently that it’s almost difficult to meet her eyes. She looks as if Kira’s just the person she washed up on shore to see.

Kira clears her throat. “Uh, yes, I am… the ruler of this land, so if you need anything, all you have to do is ask.” She realizes too late that this might not be the best choice of words for someone who can’t talk. “Well,” Kira adds, “I mean. You can gesture. We’ll figure it out.”

The woman grins and it’s clear that she’s laughing, even though she makes no sound. It’s contagious, too, and Kira can’t help but grin with her.

“I’ll let you get some rest,” Kira says, extracting her hands. She turns around and hears rustling, and then after that, a startling thump.

Julian winces. “Dear God,” he says, and rushes over.

Kira turns around and there’s the poor woman, face down on the floor.

“Whoa,” Kira says, kneeling down with Julian. They each get an arm around her and help her up. Her legs wobble and shake, so they both have to work to bear all her weight.

“Take it easy,” Julian says as they settle her back into bed. “You were out for two days, remember? You’ve got to get your strength back up first.”

The woman is breathing hard, and her cheeks are flushed, but she smiles at him. “Okay,” she mouths.

They leave her be and close the door behind them on the way out. 

Julian has an extra spring in his step.

“What?” Kira asks.

He turns to her, vibrant. “She’s really beautiful, isn’t she?”

Kira scowls. “And she’s our _guest_ , and she can’t even walk or talk, so I swear, if you-”

Julian throws up his hands. “I only meant in an aesthetic sense!”

“Sure,” Kira grouses, and shoves him down the hall.

\---

“Why would Dukat send a mute spy?” Quark asks. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Beside him, Rom nods emphatically. “The only way to find out anything about someone is to talk to them. And if you can’t talk… well… how would you tell anyone what you know?”

“All I intend to point out,” Odo says, “is that it’s suspicious, so soon after the rebellion, that a mysterious Jane Doe should appear among us from out of nowhere.”

“Okay,” Kira says. “We’re all in agreement that it’s strange. We’re all in agreement that there should have been reports of missing ships. But I think we have to consider the possibility that she’s innocent.”

From the other end of the table, Julian scoffs. “Of course Jane’s innocent. She’s clearly recovering from a traumatic experience.”

“Even if she’s not,” Miles says, “just don’t talk about anything important around Jane. Problem solved.”

“Wait a minute,” Kira interrupts. “Did you two just call her ‘Jane’?”

“For Jane Doe,” Miles answers, like it’s obvious. He glances at Keiko, who shrugs.

“We’ve got to call her something,” Keiko says.

“Well, we’re not calling her Jane,” Kira says.

“We could call her Jody,” Miles offers.

“That’s not the point!” Kira exclaims. “She has a name and we’re not going to call her Jane or Jody or any other stupid thing.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” Miles asks. “Call her, ‘Hey, you’?”

Julian tilts his head, deep in thought. “We could call her Regina.”

They all turn to stare at him.

“Where in the world did _that_ come from?” Kira asks. 

“What?” Julian asks. “Quark can call himself ‘Quark’ and it’s Regina that’s ridiculous?”

“All right, stop.” Kira lays her palms against the tabletop and looks each one of them in the eye. “Quark, Rom: go into town and see what you can find out about her. Odo: you, too. Everyone else: just be cautious. Agreed?”

They nod.

Kira sighs and sits back in her chair. “Great,” she says. “Then get out of here.”

No matter what that woman is, Kira thinks, it’s not that complicated: you help people when they’re in trouble.

She can almost hear Odo asking, “Even if you get burned?”

Kira stubbornly knocks her fist against the table. Even if you get burned.

\---

It’s a few more days before their guest has the strength to leave her bed. Kira goes to see her one morning, only to find that she isn’t in her room. She looks all over to find out where’s she gone, poking her head into every doorway until she hears giggling in the direction of the O’Briens’ quarters.

“Here, like this,” Molly’s voice echoes down the hall.

Kira peers into the room, where Molly has fanned out her dress with both hands, engaged in a deep curtsey. Their guest is watching her, attention rapt. When Molly rises up again, the woman claps delightedly.

“You’ve never had to do that?” Molly asks her.

The woman shakes her head.

“Wow,” Molly says. “I want to live where you do if nobody has to curtsey there.”

Keiko sees Kira standing in the doorway and comes over, looking apologetic.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “We couldn’t keep Molly away.”

“It’s all right,” Kira says, grinning. “I don’t think we’ll lose many state secrets here.”

“Aunt Nerys!” Molly exclaims, running to her. “Aunt Nerys, this lady doesn’t have to curtsey where she lives. Do we really have to do it here?”

“Oh, but you’re so good at it,” Kira says, kneeling down to ruffle Molly’s hair.

The woman watches from the table and gives Kira a little wave. She’s looking much better, with color back in her lips and a spark in her eyes. Her hair has been pulled back with one of Molly’s bright blue ribbons, and there are papers and pencils all over the table in front of her.

“They’ve been drawing all morning,” Keiko says. “I told her she didn’t have to, but she seemed happy to do it.”

There are clumsy doodles of starfish and dolphins and fish with long, flowing fins, sea snails and sea cucumbers and squids, all spread across the pages with big eyes and shaky lines.

“Drawing…” Kira murmurs, wheels turning in her head.

If she can’t speak, maybe instead…

“That’s it!” Kira exclaims. “Keiko, you’re a genius!” She runs to their guest, takes her by the hand, and pulls her up. She is a little surprised, but she still lets Kira lead her out of the room.

“Uh. Thank you?” Keiko says. “Where are you going?”

“We’ll be back!” Kira calls over her shoulder.

She takes the woman back to the guest room, sits her down at the table there, and starts yanking open drawers. She grabs any scrap of paper she can find and pulls a pen out of her cloak.

“Here,” Kira says, sitting on the opposite side. “Can you write?”

The woman smiles and nods, and Kira hands her the pen.

“Tell me your name,” she says. She can’t believe she didn’t think of this before.

The woman sets the pen to the paper and a beautiful, complicated design flourishes out onto the page. Kira follows its otherworldly path as best she can, but it never ends up taking the shape of a name. Maybe it is a name, in another country, but it’s not a familiar script.

Kira’s face falls. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know this language. I can’t read it.”

The woman lets loose an exaggerated sigh and tosses the pen over her shoulder.

"Oh, no,” Kira says, rushing to retrieve the pen. “You’re not going to give up that easily, are you? Maybe you can draw what it sounds like?”

The woman considers that, but she grimaces like it’s not going to work out. If she’s not from a place that writes how they do here, her name is probably quite foreign as well.

“We’re going to have to figure something out,” Kira says, “or else you’re going to get stuck with Jane.”

Hearing that, the woman perks up a bit. She gestures with her hands, like she wants Kira to keep going.

“Is… is Jane close?” Kira asks.

The woman repeats her gesture, more fervently.

“Uh…” Kira thinks back to the meeting, to any name that might be like Jane. “Jody?” she asks. 

No. 

“Jana? Jen? Julia? Jade?”

At Jade, the woman’s eyes widen, and she reaches out, placing a hand on Kira’s wrist.

“Jade is closer?” Kira asks, and the woman nods energetically, biting her lip.

Kira has no idea where to go from here. If Julia was the wrong direction, then Judith would be, too. She thinks until it hurts, trying to pull out any similar combination of sounds that make sense as a name. 

Jade, Jade, Jade: she repeats it in her head, but nothing else comes of it.

“I’m sorry,” Kira says again. “But based on your writing, it’s probably not something I could have guessed anyway, right?”

The woman shakes her head, defeated. Then she looks up again and shrugs.

“Jade,” she mouths. “Okay.”

“You want us to call you that?” Kira asks.

She nods. “Jane,” she mouths, and then sticks out her tongue.

Kira laughs, louder than she expected. For someone who can’t speak, Jade sure has a lot to say.

“Okay then, Jade,” Kira says. “What else do you think I can guess?”

Jade raises her eyebrows and picks up the pen, twirling it between her fingers. What else, indeed.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning?” Kira asks. “I don’t want to push you, but we’re all very curious about where you’ve come from. We’d like to help you get back home, if we can. If it’s too difficult right now, that’s okay,” she adds. “But if you remember anything about what brought you here, maybe it can help us help you.”

Jade’s gaze has wandered, and she seems very far away, lost in thought. She fiddles with the pen for a bit, then takes a deep breath and grabs another sheet of paper.

She first draws a castle and a shoreline. Up from the shoreline rises a wave, as tall as the castle, and Jade fills in dark clouds and bolts of lightning above it. Then she draws an X through the whole thing.

After that comes a creature – half man, half octopus – surrounded by fire. Then, another man, bald, with a goatee and a fish tail instead of legs. A merman?

She draws a mermaid with long dark hair next to the merman, and draws a line leading out from her throat. At the end of that line, she draws an auger shell, and draws an X through that, and then one more line, leading from the shell to the octopus man.

After all of that, she circles the mermaid three times, and then points to herself.

Oh, boy.

“This,” Kira says, pointing to the mermaid. “This is you?”

Jade nods vigorously.

Kira feels the air leave her lungs. This girl is so traumatized she thinks she’s a mermaid, not to mention whatever’s going on in all the other drawings. Her eyes keep coming back to the castle and the wave and the storm, but there was no storm that brought Jade here.

She moves on to the merman. “This is someone you know?”

Yes.

“Someone important to you?”

Yes.

Kira hesitates. “Your lover?” she asks.

With the way Jade’s face contorts, it’s safe to say that’s wrong.

Kira laughs. “Okay. Your brother?”

That’s a negative, too. 

“Your friend,” Kira decides.

Jade nods, and places both hands over her heart.

“Your very dear friend,” Kira adds, and Jade nods again, wistful.

Kira doesn’t even know where to start with the octopus man, but assumes him to be the villain in this scenario. She points to the auger shell. 

“You lost this,” she says.

Jade nods and gestures to her throat.

“This is your voice?” Kira asks.

Yes.

“And,” Kira says, following the line from the shell to the octopus man, “he took it from you.”

Jade nods, more enthusiastically than ever. She looks pleased, but Kira can’t help but feel more and more like she’s pushed a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down.

“Can I take these?” she asks. Maybe if she ruminates on them for a while, their real meanings will become clear.

Jade nods and helps her gather them up, and slides Kira’s pen back inside her cloak. 

“We really will do our best to help you,” Kira says.

Jade gives her a warm smile, and mouths, “Thank you.” Her face is the brightest Kira has ever seen it, and that alone helps the hopelessness shrink inside her.

\---

Kira’s just dozing off in her chair when her door bursts open. She jumps at the noise and turns to find Odo, red-faced and breathing hard.

“What the hell are you doing?” Kira asks. “You just took years off my life.”

“She knew!” Odo exclaims. “She knew I was watching her!”

Kira folds her arms and frowns. “You were _watching_ Jade?”

“Of course I was watching her; it’s my job,” Odo says. “But she _knew!_ I’ll bet she knew the entire time! She was just _playing_ with me!”

Kira cocks her head to the side as she notices something different: one of Molly’s ribbons, neatly tied with a bow around Odo’s neck. 

“What are you wearing?” she asks.

Odo’s face darkens a few more shades. He sputters for a moment before untying the ribbon and ripping it off. “ _She_ did that to me!”

Kira can’t help but laugh. “I think you need to calm down.”

“I can’t be calm! This entire situation is nothing but trouble,” Odo says, “and for some reason, you’re doing a hell of a job not worrying about it!”

“Odo-”

“This is just the kind of thing Dukat would do to catch us off guard.”

“Odo.”

“She may not even be _aware_ she’s a spy-”

“Odo, stop.” Kira snatches up Jade’s drawings from the table and shoves them against Odo’s chest. “Here,” she says. “This is how our spy says she came to us.”

Odo peels off the papers and gives them a look. 

“Merpeople?” he asks. 

Kira leans against the back of her chair, suddenly tired. “I think it’s far more likely she’s a victim as opposed to a perpetrator.”

As Odo studies the drawings, his frantic energy dissipates. It’s not long before he looks just as tired, and perhaps a little embarrassed.

“Don’t breathe a word of that,” Kira says. “I didn’t want to show those to anyone.” Her jaw tenses. “I won’t have people thinking they can take advantage of her.”

“Somehow,” Odo says, looking down at the ribbon in his hand, “I think she’ll be fine.”

The more Kira thinks about it, the surer she is that Jade is no threat to them. It’s a feeling buried deep in her bones, deep like the warmth that spreads when Jade meets her eyes and smiles.

“We have to help her, Odo,” she says.

Odo considers that, then returns the drawings in a tidy stack to the table.

“I suppose,” he says, “this is why we put you in charge.” He places a hand on her shoulder before he leaves the room.

\---

Jade’s curiosity is boundless, but her fascinations lie with the most ordinary things. She is enchanted by anything soft, reaching out to run her hand across fur cloaks and wool blankets. She spends hours with a simple telescope, looking through both ends, extending and retracting it. Then she gives it to Miles and Rom, and watches them take it apart with their tools and put it back together again. She likes the sound of glasses clinking together, and Quark shows her how to run her fingertip along the rims to make them ring. 

“She’s incredible,” he says, with that ravenous tone of voice that Kira detests.

“But what did you _find out?_ ” she asks, scowling.

“Oh,” Quark says. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Kira asks. “What did you spend all that time doing?”

“We went all over town,” Rom says. “Nobody’s missing any ladies.”

“Not one person around here is looking for a girl like her,” Quark says. “Which is fine by me.”

“ _Quark,_ ” Kira warns.

“There are still no reports of missing ships or missing persons, and no shipwrecks sighted in any of our neighboring lands,” Odo says. “Wherever she came from, it wasn’t a ship.”

So then why is it that Jade, at the end of each day, will go down to the shore and stare out at the sea until the stars come out? Why is it that she is easily distracted by the sound of the waves, stopping whatever she’s doing to close her eyes and listen to the water rushing onto the sand? Why is it that when she kneels down and picks through shells, her eyes are so sad that watching her makes Kira’s chest ache?

“Why don’t we all have dinner?” Kira proposes. “All of us, and Jade.”

She makes them all dress up, and they grumble at first, but their royal lives are still fresh and exciting, and making themselves immaculate is a luxury they haven’t known in years. 

Keiko agrees to help Jade, and the two of them are giddy and conspiratorial.

“I never expected you’d be so excited to indulge in this,” Kira says to Keiko.

“Oh, it’ll be fun,” Keiko says. “And easy.” She leans over and whispers, “Don’t you think she’s the type who’ll look good in anything?”

Maybe. Kira doesn’t usually devote thought to things like that, but she’s devoting thought to it now, thinking of Jade’s long legs carrying her through a hall, cloth trailing behind her. She will look tall and regal, and maybe Keiko will pick a dress that highlights the length of Jade’s neck.

Kira clears her throat, to no one, and her hands busy themselves hastily.

They assemble in the dining hall, all handsome and fluffed up. Keiko is the last down the stairs, and winks.

“She’ll be right out,” she says.

And when Jade does appear and finally descends the stairs, Kira thinks it happens in slow motion. She moves with effortless elegance, only accentuated by the dress: a smooth, floor-length lavender piece that reveals her shoulders. Her hair is tied up, shimmering in the light, and Keiko has given her two teardrop earrings.

She spreads out her dress and bows her head, curtseying just like Molly showed her. When she looks up again, it’s with a playful smirk.

Kira exhales, and only then realizes she’d been holding in a breath.

“Well,” Quark says beside her. “Don’t you look-”

The rest of his words are muffled by Kira’s hand over his face.

True to her eager exploration, Jade tries everything, dipping her fork into every sauce, every dressing, every mushroom head and leaf of lettuce in their appetizer. The wine makes her cough, but only at first, then she sips it until she no longer shudders, and then drinks it like juice. 

“She’s got the right idea,” Miles says, chuckling.

When the main dish is served, Jade lifts the lid on her plate, and then immediately slams it back down, eyes wide. She lifts the lid again, more cautiously this time, and again slams the lid and goes white in the face.

“Uh,” Kira says. “Jade, are you okay?”

Jade gives her one of the most forced grins she has ever seen.

Fish. They’re having fish, and that’s when it dawns on Kira.

Jade is really committed to this mermaid thing.

Odo must sense it, too, because he shows Jade his own plate, free of the fish he hates to eat, and offers it to her.

“Finally, we have someone else with good taste around here,” he says.

The rest of dinner proceeds without incident, but Kira can’t finish her food, her nerves consumed by this secret that can only get harder to keep.

\---

“Congratulations,” Julian says. “You are a perfect picture of health.”

Jade eyes him skeptically and points to her throat.

“Well, right. Except for that,” Julian admits. “We’ll work on that.”

Kira is relieved. It’s not that she thought Jade wouldn’t get better, it’s just that this felt a little bit like some sort of cosmic test, one they appear to have passed.

“I think the best thing for you now is fresh air,” Julian says. “A stroll around the town, that sort of thing. No one’s given you a tour yet, have they?” 

Julian’s expression is bright and boyish, and Jade is on to him, her smile tinted with mischief. Anyone with eyes and ears would be on to this, Kira thinks, looking between the two of them so she won’t have to roll her eyes.

“There’s a little shop by the fountain with the sweetest raspberry cookies,” Julian says. “I could take you there, if you’d like.”

Kira spreads her arms wide. “You’re going to do this right in front of me?”

“What?” Julian asks. “I only meant to-”

Jade chuckles to herself and pats the back of Julian’s hands.

“God, between you and Quark,” Kira mutters. “Jade, you can go anywhere you’d like in the kingdom. I’ll arrange whatever transportation is necessary. And,” she says, leveling a glare at Julian, “you can go with _whomever_ you would like.”

Jade taps her nails against the table, thinking, and then moves to the window, leaning on the sill and looking outside. She motions for Kira to come over and points toward the horizon, at a ship coasting on the open sea.

“You want to ride on a ship?” Kira asks.

Jade nods eagerly, her eyes sparkling, like going out on that ship is the one thing she wants most in the entire world.

“Okay,” Kira says, grinning. Jade has a real knack for making her do that.

They take Kira’s ship; that much is the easy part. Jade wants everyone to come along: Miles and Keiko and Molly, and Quark and Rom, and Julian, and Odo.

“Ah,” Odo says, stiff as a plank, “I really should stay behind.”

Jade leans in closer, grasping Odo’s hands and pleading with her eyes. 

“Odo, come on,” Kira says. It seems cruel for him to resist that earnest face.

“Someone’s got to stay behind and keep watch over things,” Odo says, and then gulps.

He isn’t wrong, so Jade relents with a theatrical sigh.

Kira pulls Odo aside and says to him, “Don’t come crying to me if you get another ribbon around your neck when we come back.”

He almost looks scared enough to leap straight onto the ship from the dock.

The winds are good and strong, filling the sails and leading them to the rich blue of the open water. Jade wanders around the ship like she’s in a dream, and for the first time, Kira thinks Odo may be right: she may not have come from a mystery vessel. In fact, she looks more like Molly did the first time they brought her out on a voyage: mesmerized by the ship slicing through the waves, by the sounds of creaking wood, by the seagulls gliding overhead. It’s like Jade has never been on a ship in her entire life.

Mermaids probably don’t jump onto a lot of ships.

Which is ridiculous, because mermaids aren’t real.

There’s a poker game in the evening, since Quark can never resist a good deck of cards. And neither can Jade, apparently.

“She cleaned you out, brother,” Rom says, grinning broadly.

“Yes, thank you, I was there,” Quark snaps. He quickly turns back to Jade. “How about double or nothing?”

Jade’s smile is devilish, and she kisses her winnings before she leaves the table. She hops up the stairs, coming to stand beside Kira at the wheel. 

“You know,” Kira says, “you’d better be careful, or you’ll have Quark shopping for a ring.”

Jade shakes her head, laughing. She leans against the railing, watching Kira steer them home.

“No one’s bothering you, right?” Kira asks. “Because if they are, I’ll toss them overboard right now.”

Jade’s smile softens, sweet and thankful. She shakes her head again.

“Good. But remember,” Kira adds, “if it ever gets to be too much: I’m the queen, and they have to listen to me.”

They both grin and laugh. It’s a shame that Kira can only hear her own; she bets Jade’s laugh is one that would make her happy, if her smile is anything to go by. 

She wants so badly to hear Jade speak, it hurts her inside.

Kira concentrates on the wheel for a while. They’re not far from port, and the sun has disappeared below the sea. Jade stays nearby, her hair fluttering in the breeze, and she places a hand on Kira’s arm.

“What is it?” Kira asks.

“You. Queen,” Jade mouths, miming a crown above her head. “How?”

“Oh,” Kira says, then chuckles. “Sometimes I don’t quite know how myself.” She looks at Jade, searching her face. “You really want to know?”

Of course Jade nods.

“It’s long,” Kira says. “Are you sure?”

Jade rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. Yes, she’s sure.

“Okay. Well, this kingdom was under dictatorial rule, for a long time. I grew up here, we all did, and none of us realized things were changing until it was too late. It was slow. Insidious. All of a sudden, rules were altered, militias appeared…” She shakes her head at the memory. “We were so stupid.”

Jade listens, attentive and patient.

“People couldn’t fight back. It was a police state. We had nothing. And our ‘benevolent ruler’…” Kira trails off again, gritting her teeth. “He was clever. He made it so people didn’t _want_ to fight back. But some of us did. Odo, Julian, and everyone else: they were all in from the start. We couldn’t do much in the beginning, but we kept going, and people started to realize they could do some damage. They joined us. We had a real resistance and, somehow, I was its leader.”

It’s all so fresh in Kira’s mind, too much of the desperation and the violence still in vivid color.

“A lot of people died,” she says, gripping the wheel harder. “At the end, I thought we would all die, but we didn’t, and the regime retreated. And with the total governmental collapse, people made a choice to pick a new leader and… and they picked me.”

“So,” she concludes, “does that answer your question?”

She half-expects Jade to laugh, but she doesn’t, not even close. If anything, she looks proud. She takes a breath, as if she’s forgotten she can’t say a word.

Later, after they dock and disembark, and Jade smiles at her over her shoulder, Kira realizes that’s the first time she’s told that story without feeling shame at the end.

\---

Rom shuffles into Kira’s room one morning and says, “I’m worried about Jade.”

“Why?” Kira asks, even though she already knows what he’ll say.

“Whenever I’m getting ready for bed, I see her outside,” Rom says. “She’s out there forever, and then when she comes back, she doesn’t look like herself at all.”

“It’s been a while since she arrived,” Kira says. “I wouldn’t blame her for missing her home.”

“I guess so,” Rom says. “But you know when you’re at the tavern, and you see someone waiting and waiting for someone else, but they never show up? That’s how Jade looks. At least I think so.”

Kira thinks of Jade’s drawings, of the man with the goatee. Maybe she’s waiting for him. Maybe he’s across the ocean, waiting for her.

Maybe he’s not even alive to look for her.

The next night, Kira can’t bear to simply watch her anymore, out on a rock by herself, so she takes a light cloak with her and ventures to the shore.

“I don’t think Julian would be too happy to know you’re out here with nothing to keep you warm,” Kira says.

Jade’s smile is weak, but she accepts the cloak and slips it around her shoulders. 

After a moment, Kira asks, “Will you let me sit with you?”

Jade studies Kira, like she’s surprised that she’s asking, and then moves over on the rock to make room.

Kira looks out at the water as she eases down. The moon is full and there are no clouds to hide the stars.

“You come here a lot now,” she says.

Jade gives no response.

“We could go out there more often,” Kira says. “Every day, if you want.”

Jade shakes her head. She seems tired, like something is clamped on her shoulders, weighing her down.

For a while, Kira stares at the point in the distance where the sea meets the sky, trying to see what Jade sees. Whatever she’s waiting for, or remembering, or seeking out, Kira wants to find it, too.

Jade draws the cloak tighter around herself.

It seems silly and selfish for Kira to wish that she could simply ask what’s wrong. Jade must wish she could tell her. And if Kira’s own feelings are anything to go by, that wish must carry a hard, physical ache, more painful than she could comprehend.

“Do you know how we won our war?”

Jade doesn’t move much, only looking at Kira out of the corner of her eye.

“We had faith,” Kira answers.

A big wave rolls down in front of them, pushing water up the shore. The foamy remnants bubble and hiss in the sand.

“I believe that we’ll find your friend,” Kira says, “and I believe that we’ll get you home. It’s all right if you don’t. I can do it for both of us.”

Jade sits up a little straighter, and her expression is hard to decipher. Or maybe Kira is just projecting her own uncertainty about the effect of her words.

“Well,” she says, pushing herself up, “I think I’ll-”

As she stands, Jade reaches out and grabs her hand. Her expression isn’t hard to figure out now.

Kira sits back down, opening her palm, and Jade’s hand comes to rest in hers. Jade meets her eyes, and there’s some life in them again.

Kira squeezes her hand. Jade squeezes back.

They both watch the swell of the distant waves, the moon climbing higher and higher into the sky. Kira stays with Jade for a long time, until she is ready to go inside.

\---

“He’s here,” Odo says, his face dark.

Kira closes her book and beside her, Molly sets her pencil down. Jade looks between the three of them, concerned.

“It’s okay,” Kira says. “Remember our benevolent dictator I told you about?”

Molly’s eyes have turned to stone, her face too serious for someone so young.

“Both of you stay here,” Kira says. “I’ll be back.”

She and Odo move silently down the halls together. At the doorway to the stairs, everyone else is waiting.

“Wonder what his excuse is this time?” Miles says.

“He never can resist dropping by,” Julian mutters.

“We’ll come with you,” Keiko offers.

It isn’t necessary for them to do so, but they’re all here already, so Kira nods. “Strength in numbers, right?” She pushes open the heavy doors.

At the bottom of the stairs, in the center of the foyer, he is there, flanked by two attendants robed in white.

“Ah, your majesty,” Dukat says with a bow. Only he can manage to make those words so sour. “You’ve brought all our friends along today.”

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Kira asks. 

Behind her, the group takes strategic positions around the room.

“Oh, nothing out of the ordinary,” Dukat assures her. “Except that I’ve become aware of a troubling rumor back home.”

“And what’s that?”

Instead of answering her, Dukat smiles, then grins and laughs.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m just so happy to see you so well.”

Kira offers him a razor-edged smile in return. “I think you should get to the point.”

With a clap of his hands, Dukat nods. “Yes,” he says. “You see, we’ve come all the way here to-”

He stops and looks up, and Kira hears the doors creak. Dukat’s face changes in an instant, and he spreads his arms wide.

“There she is,” he breathes. “Our poor, sick girl.”

Kira looks behind her, and Jade is at the top of the stairs. Her gaze is piercing and chilly, and Kira has never seen her so intimidating.

“My dear,” Dukat says. “We’ve come to take you back.”

His attendants glide in her direction, but don’t even reach the stairs before Miles and the other close in. Even Rom and Quark are ready for a brawl.

“What is this?” Kira asks.

Dukat puts a fist to his chest. “It’s such a sad story,” he says. “She washed up on our shores a few weeks back. She’d been through a terrible shipwreck – no survivors, so stricken she couldn’t speak, and she genuinely believed herself to be a mermaid.”

Something cold is making its way through Kira’s blood, freezing her in place.

“Come now,” Dukat says. “Come back to us, and let’s continue your treatment.” 

He reaches inside his collar, pulling out a chain around his neck, and dangling at the end of the chain is an auger shell.

Kira turns around, and Jade looks as if someone has struck her. Her drawings – the shell, the octopus man – that part of it has suddenly become crystal clear.

“Hold on,” Kira says. “You can’t take her just yet. She’s still very weak and shouldn’t undertake such a long journey so soon. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

Julian, at first bewildered, quickly understands. “That’s right,” he says. “Absolutely correct. She, uh, she was in such bad shape when she came here, I couldn’t possibly release her yet without more observation.”

Dukat’s smile is significantly more restrained. “Of course,” he says. “We’ll be happy to wait.”

\---

Julian and Odo throw glances at Kira while Jade sequesters herself in her room, glances like, “How could you not tell me she was having delusions?” and “I may have been right after all,” and the thought of them both turns Kira’s stomach.

The worst part of Dukat was always the doubt.

“Jade?” Kira asks. The door is not locked, but she is still cautious, afraid now of what she might find inside. 

Jade’s hands are behind her head, pulling a knot tight around her hair. She’s put on a heavy dress, one meant for traveling.

Kira lets out half a laugh. “Are you going somewhere?” she asks, her blood running cold again. 

Jade she is quiet and composed, moving like she no longer belongs in this space. The Jade who took up entire rooms just by being in them is not here anymore.

“Were you really ever in Dukat’s country?” Kira asks quietly.

Jade turns to her, hands folded in front of her, and shakes her head.

Kira’s shoulders drop with relief. “I didn’t think so,” she says. “I never believed him, so don’t worry about that. But…” But there’s still one thing that doesn’t add up, if Jade was never with Dukat. “How did he get your shell?”

Jade has no answer, just sadness and distance, like all the nights on the shore.

“Please tell me where you’re going,” Kira says.

Of course Jade can’t tell her, but Kira wants her to, with her eyes, with her face, with her hands. There’s so much Kira doesn’t understand, but she wants to, more than anything.

Jade sighs, and she smiles, almost like a mother. It isn’t condescending, not like Dukat, but like a mother who loves her child and doesn’t want to see them grow up to learn the ugly truths about the world. Like there are things Jade knows about that Kira never will, like… like she really came up from a magical world below the water, to do things Kira cannot comprehend.

She comes to Kira, and Kira swallows hard, her throat closing up having to look at her, at this Jade who is so far removed from the world of land. Jade puts her hands on Kira’s shoulders and presses a kiss to her forehead.

Kira waits for an explanation that doesn’t come, and Jade moves past her, going toward the door.

“Wait,” Kira says, latching onto Jade’s wrist, and when she does, she feels something hard beneath her sleeve. She looks up at Jade, questioning, and then she sees it. She has seen Jade’s expression in her own reflection countless times: before exchanging fire with Dukat’s forces, before igniting the flames that might have burned them all up, before sneaking past enemy soldiers trained to shoot with no hesitation.

“What are you doing?” Kira asks, more urgently, her face going white as she scrambles to unearth what she knows she’ll find. Countless times, she has done this, too, and when a knife drops out from Jade’s sleeve, Kira finally understands.

“No,” she says. The blade is shining, freshly sharpened. She takes it, her fingers shaking as they close around the hilt. “If you do this, you’ll die.”

Jade holds out her hand. “Please,” she mouths.

“No,” Kira repeats, hiding the knife away in her cloak. “I won’t let you. I was never going to let him take you, do you understand?” She digs her nails into Jade’s arms. “You’re safe here.”

Jade shakes her head.

“ _Yes,_ ” Kira hisses. “As long as I draw breath, you are safe.”

“Not me,” Jade mouths. She takes hold of Kira’s hands, makes sure she is looking her in the eye. “You.”

Her? Her what? She’s not safe? Kira doesn’t care about that; she can take care of herself, and is about to tell Jade as much when another thought comes to her: she thinks back to Jade’s first drawing, of the castle, with the storms overhead and the wave threatening to swallow it whole.

“Are my people in danger?” Kira asks.

Jade tightens her grip on Kira’s hands, and she nods.

That’s all Kira needs to sink this knife into Dukat herself, but she needs more. More time, more information, more anything.

“Please,” she says. “Stay here. Promise me.”

It takes her a long moment, but finally, Jade nods.

Kira nods back, and she exits, her vision tunneled and red-hot.

The first thing she does is go to Odo.

“I need you to do something for me,” she says to him. “Make sure Jade does not leave that room.”

“All right,” Odo says, confused, but willing. Kira turns to leave almost as quickly as she came in, and Odo asks, “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know yet,” Kira calls, not looking back.

The second thing she does is go to her room, dig the knife out of her cloak, and throw it in a drawer. She runs her hands through her hair and takes a shaking breath.

She throws open the doors to the balcony and steps outside, leaning on the railing. The wind is stronger tonight, and Kira takes deep breaths until the thrumming in her head can’t be heard over the waves crashing onto the beach.

When she feels like she’s no longer going to jump out of her own skin, she looks to the shore, and sees a shadow there. It’s a person standing alone on the wet part of the sand, and Kira’s eyes narrow.

It’s Dukat.

She clenches her teeth and goes down to the water.

As she comes up behind Dukat, she hears him take a deep, sighing breath, and he stretches his neck up toward the moon.

“Do you ever miss the water, Nerys?”

Kira stays behind him, keeping him in her sights. “What are you doing here, Dukat?”

“Reminiscing,” he replies. “Thinking about how much I miss this shore.”

“It was never your shore,” Kira corrects. “You stole it.”

Dukat turns around, shaking his head. “That’s an awfully black and white way of looking at what happened. I thought you, as queen, would have grown beyond such limited dichotomies.”

“Not with you,” Kira says, biting back flames.

Dukat sighs loudly. “Was it really so miserable?” he asks. “The life I provided?”

“What, the public beatings?” Kira asks. “The food rationing? The forced labor?” She folds her arms. “The life you gave us was never a life.”

Dukat doesn’t look so convinced. He regards her with pity, like she’s a fool, and he the wise teacher, so sad his pupil won’t listen to his lessons.

“Well, you’ve made your desires quite clear,” he says. “It’s not my place to interfere anymore.”

“Then leave,” Kira says.

“I can’t,” Dukat replies. “Not without that girl.”

“She’s not going with you.”

At first, Dukat seems shocked by Kira’s outright defiance, then amused. He nods slowly.

“All right,” he says. “I suppose she can decide for herself.”

He says nothing after that, and Kira’s body is so tense she wonders if she’ll snap.

“Tell me,” Dukat eventually says. “Does she miss the shore, too?”

Kira’s stomach twists.

“All I know is that you have something of hers,” she says, “and I think you should give it back.”

Dukat turns to face her, smiling. He pulls up the shell from beneath his collar, easing the chain up and over his head.

Kira holds out her hand without a word, and Dukat lets the chain pool into her open palm. He gingerly places the shell on top.

“There you are,” he says.

Kira is about to thank him, but she sees a glow like a firefly coming from the shell. An orange, wispy glow, snaking tendrils up in the air, dancing above her hand. She takes a breath and heat shoots down her throat, like she’s inhaled an open flame, but she does not cough. Light swirls around her head.

Something wordless, almost soundless, echoes in her mind. A voice.

 _Let go,_ it says – she says – it’s a woman, a warm body embracing her from behind, a chin on her shoulder and whispers in her ear. There’s nothing but air, but the voice is so friendly, so close and smooth, like a blanket around Kira’s shoulders as she sits in front of a fire.

 _Let go,_ the voice says again.

Kira wants to agree, but no words will come to her. Somehow, that’s okay. Everything is okay. Has anything ever been wrong?

“Nerys,” Dukat says, still smiling. “What would you say now, if I asked you to marry me?”

Her limbs are tingling.

_Let go._

She can trust this voice.

She will do anything for this voice.

“Yes,” Kira answers.

Everything is alight, and the voice laughs along with her.

\---

Odo finds her in her room, eyes closed, reclining in her chair.

“Didn’t you have a meeting with the merchants’ guild today?” he asks.

“I cancelled it.”

“You’d been waiting to have that meeting for three weeks,” Odo says, bewildered.

“It’s fine. I just realized we didn’t need to have it anymore.”

Odo hesitates. “Have you had any of your meetings today?”

Kira smiles. “I cancelled all of them.”

“ _All_ of them?!”

“It’s all right, Odo.” Kira opens her eyes, and Odo has gone pale. He doesn’t need to be so troubled. “We won’t need meetings anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kira stands, and she puts her arms around Odo, nuzzling into his chest. “Why don’t you gather everyone together in the conference room?” She looks up at him. “There’s no need to be so tense. I just have an announcement, that’s all.”

Odo does as she asks, although he can’t stop looking over his shoulder at her. Poor sweet Odo. He just doesn’t understand yet.

“We fought for so long, just to be safe,” Kira tells them. “And last night I realized what I needed to do to make that happen for all of us.”

_That’s right. It’s better this way._

Oh, she wishes they could hear that voice. If only they could hear her, Kira wouldn’t have to explain anything; they would just know.

“Tomorrow I will marry Lord Dukat,” Kira says.

The silence in the room is hard and icy.

“What?” Julian breathes.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Miles asks.

“If our countries are joined together, we won’t have to be afraid of anything ever again,” Kira says.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Quark says. “This is a plan. You have a plan, right?”

“The plan is that we can all live in comfort together for the rest of our lives.”

“At the cost of what?” Keiko asks. “Do you hear yourself?”

“After everything we did,” Rom says, looking at the floor. “After all those people died…”

“Come on, help us out here!” Quark exclaims. “You’re not _this_ nuts; I know this is a plan! Let us in on it!”

“I know it’s hard to understand,” Kira says.

Julian looks like he might be sick. “That doesn’t even begin to describe it!”

“Nerys,” Keiko says, approaching her slowly. She places her hands on her arms like she isn’t quite sure of what she’ll touch. “Please, tell us what’s really happening.”

“I have,” Kira says. “Tomorrow Lord Dukat and I will be married, and our countries will be even stronger.”

“I know you’re not serious,” Miles says. “If you were, I’d have to kill you myself.”

Kira turns to him, fury spiking in her chest.

“I suggest you remember,” she says, “who you elected to be your queen.”

Keiko backs away from her. Odo leans against the table and then collapses into a chair, and Kira wants to laugh at his foolishness. They’re all fools. Why can’t they see what’s right in front of them?

_You don’t need them._

It’s true. With that voice behind her, Kira has nothing to fear.

From the back of the room, Jade stares at her, and after they are done and Kira shuts herself in her room, it is Jade who bursts inside, slamming the door against the wall. 

“What’s wrong?” Kira asks, calm. “You look like you ran all the way here.”

Jade marches up to her and grabs her face with both hands. She is shaking, and her lip quivers.

“Stop,” she mouths. “You will die.”

Kira chuckles. “Why would you say that? I’ve never been more safe.”

She moves to turn away, but Jade does not let her go. She holds Kira in place, her eyes sharp and determined. 

“Jade,” Kira warns, but Jade cuts her off with a kiss.

The dancing flames in Kira’s mind blow away into smoke. The voice grows quiet, until she can’t hear it at all.

Jade’s hands have stilled against her face, and Kira feels as if she is being pulled in from a strong current. The heat from Jade’s mouth is greater than that of the flames.

Kira’s eyes widen. What the hell has she been doing?

As quickly as Jade kissed her, a splitting pain shoots through Kira’s head, and she cries out, crumpling to the floor. She curls up, the pain strong enough to make her sweat.

 _Come back to me_ , she hears. The voice is reaching out, and she grabs for it.

The pain dulls, and Kira sits up, breathing hard. Jade is still with her, a hand on her back and fear in her eyes.

Kira reaches for Jade’s arm. “You’ll come to the wedding, won’t you, Jade?” she asks, and stands without her help.

\---

The ship they decorate for the wedding is one of their best, broad and strong, its wood glinting amber in the evening light. They have plenty of guests, but they are grouped tightly together, their conversations hushed and quiet. Dukat brings along plenty of his own men, who stand at attention along the sides of the ship. It’s nice how committed he is to ensuring their safety.

Molly is crying, huddled in a corner of the bridal suite. Keiko sits with her, stroking her hair.

“You’ve got to carry the train, remember?” she says.

Molly buries her face in her mother’s blouse. 

Kira lets her gaze drift to Jade, arms folded as she sits in a chair. 

“Jade,” Kira says. “Come and help me with my hair.”

At first, Jade only looks at her, like Kira has disappointed her, but she gets up and picks up a brush.

There’s not much, but Jade brushes what’s there, and Kira studies her eyes in the mirror. It’s hard to tell what she’s thinking. 

Her fingertips are cool against Kira’s scalp, just like they were cool on her face, when she-

A shot of pain flares behind her eyes. She clenches her fist in her lap, and then bats away Jade’s hands.

“Enough,” she says, “I’ll do it myself.”

There is a knock at the door, and Odo steps inside.

“They’re ready,” he says, but he won’t look at Kira directly. All the effort she’s put into getting into this dress, and it’s going to be wasted on people who would rather stare at the floor.

Molly is still crying, and Keiko won’t look at Kira, either. Her blouse is wet from Molly’s tears.

“Well, we’ll need someone to carry the-” Kira says, but Jade kneels down, gathering handfuls of fabric.

“Oh,” Kira says. “Then I suppose we’re ready to go.”

Jade is the only one who will look her in the eye, and it makes that ache blossom in Kira’s head. 

_All you have to do is get through the ceremony._

That’s right. That’s all she has to do.

“We received word from the mainland a few minutes ago,” Odo whispers on the way up. “There are riots.”

“Hmm,” Kira says. They’ll have to be set straight when they’re finished here. 

Everyone is on their best behavior on deck. Molly has stopped crying, and every guest is silent as the violins play. At the end of a red carpet stands the altar, with candles burning bright and white lilies on either side. Dukat awaits her, and it’s strange, but he seems far away, like the carpet is infinite and Kira’s legs will never carry her to the end.

When she reaches the altar, she feels as if she is floating above the ship, above her own body. It’s almost like she wants to sleep. She joins Dukat at his side, and Jade sets the train down, but when she stands, she doesn’t leave. Instead, she steps to the right, behind Dukat, and they stare at each other for what seems to Kira’s slow, dulled sense of comprehension like a very long time.

The rest happens in slow motion. Dukat starts to turn to the altar, but Jade takes a deep breath and grabs him by the shoulder, twisting him around. She rears back, knuckles white, and slams her fist into his jaw.

The deck explodes into chaos. Dukat’s men rush forward, but every single one is stopped – by Odo, by Miles, by Julian, by all of Kira’s people. Weapons are wrenched out of hands and tossed overboard. Molly runs like a shot, darting below deck while Keiko dispatches three men in a row by herself. Even the guests that can’t fight pick up glasses and plates, throwing them and breaking them into makeshift daggers. 

Jade and Dukat have each other, literally, by their throats, wrestling each other to the deck. They are fighting over the shell, kicking and punching each other as Jade yanks at the chain. Dukat returns her blows until her lip splits, but she does not let go. She pins him after that, and beats him until her knuckles come away red.

People are running, yelling. The candles have been knocked out of their holders, and Kira can’t tell whether anything has caught fire. She is bumped and pushed around, but she can’t seem to move out of anyone’s way.

Something skitters across the deck. People are running so fast, Kira can’t see it at first, but in a lull she finally spots the shell, still attached to its broken chain. At last, she moves, pushing back against the crowd. Somehow, it seems important to get to the shell, to hold it close to her.

She kneels down, picking it up like she would an injured bird.

And then, bursting through the crowd, Jade slams her into the deck and wrests the shell from her hands. She takes off toward the altar, grabbing one of the long fallen candlesticks. Kira watches, dazed, as Jade throws the shell atop the altar and raises the candlestick above her head.

“NO!” Dukat suddenly shouts.

Jade grins, wry and victorious, and swings the candlestick down. There is a blinding white flash of light, and Kira feels her head hit the deck.

When she comes to, people are still shouting, but someone is standing over her, cradling her head in their hands.

“Nerys. Are you all right?”

It’s familiar. This is a sound she knows already, but she has never heard it before like this – clear and unfiltered, blowing the fog around her head away with strong gusts, until none of it is left.

“Nerys! Wake up,” the voice says.

The voice.

Kira takes a breath like she’s coming up for air, and when her eyes snap open, she sees Jade.

“Are you ready to answer me yet?” Jade asks.

That voice, all along, was hers.

Kira sits up so fast it makes her dizzy. “You can talk!”

Jade grins. “More or less.”

There’s a lot Kira needs to know, like why she’s on a ship in a wedding dress, surrounded by broken glass and people pummeling each other, but she grabs Jade’s hands and asks, “What’s your name?”

Jade helps her stand, and then says, “Jadzia, and I can’t tell you how it good it feels to finally say that out loud.”

Jadzia. “It’s beautiful,” Kira says.

There is a scream, cutting sharply through the rest of the noise, and then another. Kira whirls around and, in the middle of a row of broken tables, surrounded by people slowly backing away, Dukat pulls himself up. It’s difficult to see at first around the shredded cloth and splintered wood, but something has changed, so much so that Kira’s brain is having a hard time registering what she sees. His legs are gone, and in their place: slithering black tentacles.

Octopus tentacles.

“How unfair,” Dukat says. “I’d done so well for so long keeping my little secret. But,” he adds with a dark grin, “I’m not the only one here with a secret.”

An inferno ignites around him, and a column of flame rushes out from his hand.

“Run,” Jadzia commands, and they dive out of the way.

People scramble for the lifeboats while fire shoots around the ship. Better that they should get away, Kira thinks, as she’s almost certain this ship isn’t coming back to port. 

She nearly runs straight into a shot of fire, but Jadzia pulls her back. She seems to know just where to go to avoid stepping into a blaze, but they don’t have anywhere else to flee except overboard.

Kira looks ahead and sees nothing but flame rushing toward her. It’s too late, but at the last moment, Jadzia shoves her out of the way. There is a cracking sound, a deafening thunder, and Jadzia is flung backward, slamming into the altar before she is engulfed in fire.

For a moment, Kira’s legs threaten to give out under her, but then she sprints toward the fire, dodging debris, her eyes tearing against the heat. She hears shouting, and then two pairs of arms pull her back.

“Don’t!” Miles yells. “Do you want to get killed?!”

“Let go!” Kira struggles against him and Odo, but she is too frantic to break away. The fire is taller than all of them, and she can’t see Jadzia within. This can’t be happening, not now, not like this. She doesn’t know what else to do but scream Jadzia’s name.

Then just as quickly as they appeared, the flames around the altar vanish, and Jadzia is there, alive and moving. She bears no scars, no burns, but the lower half of her body has been replaced by something long and blue and serpentine, and Kira follows it all the way to the pair of fins at the end.

After Dukat, she’s not even shocked.

Jadzia raises her head as she struggles to push herself up. “Surprise.”

The ship rocks to one side, sending everyone stumbling.

“You’re too late!” Dukat declares. “The preparations are complete. There’s nothing any of you can do now!”

The flames spiral up around him and the entire ship shudders. Kira hears the sound of snapping planks.

“Are there any lifeboats left?” She has already seen one snap off its ropes and plunge into the water.

“There’s one,” Odo says, and the look on his face is enough to tell her they’re not all going to fit.

“Go,” Kira says, already running back toward the altar. “That’s an order!”

The ship trembles as she runs, swaying harder now. Her knees nearly buckle, but she makes it to Jadzia, who frowns at her.

“I think you’re forgetting I can breathe underwater,” she says, “and you can’t.”

“Then you can escort me back to shore,” Kira says, feverishly tearing heavy excess fabric from her dress. 

The ship rocks hard. Kira throws a pile of cloth aside and lifts Jadzia from the deck, slinging her over her shoulder. Things must be bad, because Jadzia doesn’t have anything to say about being carried like a potato sack.

At the side of the ship, Kira takes a final look back at Dukat, obscured now by the spiral of flame, growing taller and broader around him. There are chunks of wood floating in the air.

“Are you ready?” Kira asks.

“Just jump,” Jadzia answers.

So she does, and they slam into the water. Kira comes up coughing and sputtering, but Jadzia slips her arms around her.

“I’ve got you,” Jadzia says, pulling her away from the splintering ship. “Which way?”

Kira points in the direction of the shore in between coughs. “We came out pretty far,” she says.

“Swim whenever you can,” Jadzia says. “I’ll carry you when you can’t.”

They start off toward home. Kira can’t see any lifeboats, and the farther they get from the ship, the less of it there is to see over her shoulder. It’s a gruesome, haunted sight, with debris slowly rotating around where the ship used to be, and the fire still swirling. Dukat and the rest of his octopus limbs are too obscured now to be seen, or maybe he’s not even there.

“Wait,” Kira says. “Stop for a second.” Everything is coming back to her in nauseating waves: the things she said, the things she did, the riots back in town.

She eases herself onto her back so she can float. Jadzia comes up next to her, catching her breath. Kira listens to the water, to the dull roar of whatever the hell’s going on at what used to be her ship, and she laughs.

“Oh my God,” she says, her voice shaking. “We fed you fish.”

Jadzia laughs, too. “It’s not the worst thing that’s happened so far.”

They stare at the sky until Kira can no longer bear it. When she kicks back into motion, Jadzia follows close beside her, and neither of them looks back or stops again.

\---

“This doesn’t change my feelings for you, not one bit,” Quark says. “It could still work.”

Jadzia leans over the side of the bathtub, smiling slyly. “You’ve given this some thought, haven’t you?”

“Of course! Just because you’re a mermaid and I’m a human doesn’t mean we can’t- hey. Hey!” 

Odo grabs the back of Quark’s collar and drags him to the other side of the room.

“What about you, Julian?” Jadzia asks. “Does this change anything for you?”

Julian’s face goes red. “Well. I-” He stammers for a bit before giving up, gesturing at her. “I just can’t believe this is real. _You’re_ real!”

Rom grins. “This is exciting. I’ve never met a mermaid before.”

They are all in Kira’s room, in various stages of dishevelment. About the best they could do after their escape was get into the castle, change into dry clothes, and stick Jadzia in a bathtub. 

Kira leans against the side of her bed, Molly’s head in her lap as she sleeps. Things were supposed to be safe now, for Molly, for all her people, but now they’re worse than they’ve ever been. 

Keiko must see the anguish in her face, because she leans over and touches her shoulder. “No one blames you for what happened.”

“That’s right,” Miles says. “Word’s gotten out in town about all the weird stuff, and they think you’re very brave for setting up a stunt like that wedding.”

Kira shuts her eyes. People may have accepted their own interpretation of events, but that doesn’t change what really occurred. She was so easily overcome; how can they hope to fight Dukat now, when he wields such power?

“Nerys,” Jadzia says softly. “There was no way you could have stopped it. Dukat has access to some very powerful… I guess you could call it magic.”

“Like the magic that made you human?” Kira asks.

“In a way. He wasn’t responsible for that, although now you can see he’s been doing it to himself for a very long time.”

“Then who helped you get here, and where did they go?” Julian asks. “You didn’t really come all this way all by yourself, did you?”

Jadzia leans her head back against the tub, and her tail pokes up from the other side. “There’s so much to explain; I don’t even know where to start.”

“Why not at the beginning?” Odo asks.

“The beginning assumes you didn’t just learn _today_ that mermaids are real,” Jadzia says. “There’s so much I have to take you through.”

“Then give us the short version,” Miles says.

“There _is_ no short version.”

Kira thinks back to how long it took her just to glean context from Jadzia’s drawings. There certainly isn’t a short version.

“Hey,” Kira says. “Somebody open my desk drawer and take out the papers that are in there.”

Odo understands what she’s asking, and retrieves the drawings from the desk. “Ah,” he says, “I guess you’ll need a towel so they don’t get wet.”

Jadzia laughs. “You kept these the whole time?”

“They were the only thing I had to go on,” Kira says with a smile. It’s incredible now to think about just how wrong her guesses were, and how Jadzia couldn’t have been more literal with what she put on those papers.

“You drew this?” Quark asks, peering in close. He points to Molly. “She can do better than that.”

Jadzia rolls up the papers and taps Quark on the head. “I was under a little stress at the time. Besides, you have no idea how hard it is to draw up here compared to underwater.”

“Wait a minute,” Miles says. “What do you draw with underwater?”

“Let’s not get too off track, please,” Kira says, sighing.

Jadzia unfurls the papers and points to the merman with the goatee. “Then let’s start here. This is my friend, Benjamin, and he’s the one who made me human. Just like Dukat can use magic, so can he, but it’s different. It’s like… two sides. Benjamin has what you’d call the good side, and Dukat has the evil side.”

She points next to her drawing of Dukat. “This all started because of his exile. We’re not big fans of him under the sea, either, and he was banished from our waters. Not long after that, we realized he was disappearing for months at a time. We had no idea where he was going, what he was doing, and there was no trace of him anywhere in the entire ocean. That had to have been when he arrived in your world up here.”

“But that means he was never from his own country at all,” Rom says. “He was from the sea?”

“Unfortunately,” Jadzia says.

“So he must have used his magic to gain control of his land,” Julian says.

“Maybe not,” Kira says. “We all know how persuasive he can be.”

“Either way,” Jadzia continues, “Benjamin and I figured out what was happening and that he had the ‘evil magic’ on his side, so we had to stop him. Now, Benjamin can’t really leave the ocean, being the king, so-”

“Wait a minute!” Quark exclaims. “Your friend is the king of the ocean?”

“Oh. I didn’t mention that?”

Quark’s mouth drops. “You’re on a first name basis with the king of the whole ocean!”

“You’re all on a first name basis with Kira,” Jadzia says.

“Yeah, but she’s not queen of the entire planet,” Miles says, wide-eyed.

Julian looks like he’s moments from a breakdown. “He’s the _king_ of the _ocean?_ ”

“Yes.”

“The king of the ocean,” Rom says, awed.

Julian puts a hand to his head. “The king of the ocean…”

Kira heaves an exasperated sigh. “If one more person in this room says ‘the king of the ocean’-” 

“All right,” Jadzia says. “Benjamin can’t be leaving the sea when he’s the king, so that just left me, and I couldn’t exactly flop around on the beach until someone came to help us. It would be better, we thought, if I could integrate into the human world, warn people and get them ready to fight, and then use that momentum to get Dukat out.”

“But without your voice?” Keiko asks. “And on your own?”

Jadzia shakes her head. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Dukat found out what we were planning way before we were ready. At the time, he didn’t have the strength to undo the magic that made me human, but he did have more than enough for a curse.”

“The shell,” Kira says.

Jadzia nods. “The most he could do was rip out my voice and seal it in there.” Her hand brushes against her throat, and Kira wonders about her choice of words. It had to have been painful. 

“But,” Jadzia continues, “it did what he wanted, which, evidently, was to stall us.”

“And where’s your friend now?” Miles asks.

Jadzia looks down. “That’s the thing. I don’t know.”

“Is he…?” Rom doesn’t finish his thought.

“I have no idea,” Jadzia says quietly. “We were supposed to meet, every night, to keep each other updated on our progress.”

Kira thinks back to all the times Jadzia sat on the shore, waiting.

“He never showed up,” Jadzia says, and the look on her face suggests she doesn’t want to dwell on what that might mean.

“Back on the ship,” Kira says, “the last thing Dukat said was that we were too late. What’s he going to do now?”

“There’s only one thing he _could_ be doing,” Jadzia says, her face darkening further. She points to her drawing of the castle and the giant wave. “He’s going to try to merge the worlds of the land and the sea.”

They are all quiet, staring at each other, trying to figure out what she means. Kira doesn’t think there’s much thought to be put into it; the drawing is pretty clear. 

They’re all going to die if they can’t stop Dukat.

“Is there anything we can do?” Kira asks.

“Kill him,” Jadzia says. “Somehow.”

“Is it possible?” Odo asks.

“I don’t know.”

Molly is still sleeping, undeterred by the entire conversation. Kira looks down at her, looks at Keiko, looks at the faces of every person in the room.

A queen must protect her people.

“Where will he be now?” she asks.

“Exactly where we left him,” Jadzia answers. “Guaranteed.”

“I’ll take my ship out.”

“Alone?” Rom asks.

“Yes.”

“No,” Keiko says. “You have to take us with you.”

Kira shakes her head. “If we lose all of us, the country falls apart. I won’t have that happen, not after everything we did to get here.”

“We all saw what was happening out there!” Julian says. “You’ll get killed by yourself!”

“That’s why you’ll take me,” Jadzia says. “I’m not exactly from here, remember? So it shouldn’t matter if I go with you.”

She’s got her there. 

Jadzia’s gaze is steady and calm, and as much as Kira wants to say no, this is exactly what Jadzia came here to do. To change her body, to come to an unfamiliar place, to go up against someone who could destroy her with a wave of his hand – It’s not fair to deny her the chance to finish what she risked her life to start.

“All right,” Kira decides. “The two of us, and that’s it.”

“We should leave in the morning,” Jadzia says. “It’ll be dark enough out there already.”

Storms, Kira surmises. It seems appropriate. 

Keiko lifts Molly’s head from Kira’s lap and takes her in her arms. She filters out of the room with everyone else, quiet, slipping away like they used to in the old days. 

The night before a mission was always the worst.

“Where should I…?” Jadzia asks.

“Stay here,” Kira says. “Where else would we put that tub?” She finally gets up from the floor, stretching her stiff muscles. “If there’s anything more I need to know, you can tell me. I doubt I’ll be getting much sleep.”

Jadzia nods and sits back. She exhales slowly.

\---

It’s still dark when Kira first wakes, and a low rumble of thunder spikes her adrenaline. She turns over and finds Jadzia sitting up in the tub.

“Have you slept at all?” she murmurs.

“A little,” Jadzia answers.

“Are you sure you’re comfortable in there? I can get you something else.”

Jadzia smiles. “No, it’s fine.”

“Do you need any more water?”

“No.”

There is sloshing as Jadzia turns to face Kira in the dim light.

“Do you know what surprised me the most about the surface?” she asks. “The sounds. Clear, bright sounds. Bells and chimes and instrument strings. Things you’d never be able to hear muffled underwater.”

“The ringing of a glass?” Kira asks.

“The ringing of a glass,” Jadzia says, breathless. “I could run my finger along the rim of every glass in this castle and I’d still want more.”

There’s so much Kira wants to ask her: if mermaids dance, for instance. If they have any music at all. If it’s heavy up here, with gravity pressing down. And what _do_ mermaids draw with underwater?

There is a flash of lightning outside, and Kira counts the seconds until the thunder. Still far, but coming closer.

“Are you scared?” she asks.

Jadzia takes a breath. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in my life. What about you?”

“Yes,” Kira says, without hesitation. “But at the same time, it’s all so surreal, I’m not sure how I should react. It doesn’t feel like it’s really hit me yet.” She turns onto her back and puts an arm above her head. “If I hadn’t stopped you, that time, when you took the knife…”

“I’m not sure it would have mattered. Plus,” Jadzia says, “I let you stop me.”

They lapse into silence. A tree branch knocks against the window.

After a while, Kira says, “There’s one more thing I’m wondering about.”

“What is it?”

“Out of all the places you could have gone, you came here. Why?”

“Well,” Jadzia says. “It wasn’t random. You were chosen.”

At that, Kira sits up in her bed. “Chosen? By whom?”

“That’s a little harder to explain.” Jadzia stretches to her full length, draping the end of her tail over the side. “I guess you could say it was the people who gave Benjamin his magic in the first place.”

There are people under the sea powerful enough to give magic away, and they chose Kira for this? She feels cold suddenly. Surely there were better choices – someone out there who’d actually seen a mermaid before, maybe.

She doesn’t know what to say for a long while, long enough that she thinks Jadzia might have fallen asleep, but then she hears her sigh and sees that she’s still sitting up, still thinking.

“I just can’t believe there was a whole world out there, and we had no idea,” Kira tells her. “And now we may never get to learn more about it.”

“I know,” Jadzia says. “I think… I think I really would have liked to spend more time here.”

The first rule of the rebellion was never to talk like you were going to die. They haven’t done a great job upholding that rule.

Kira’s just starting to drift off when she hears Jadzia say, “There is one good thing in all this: I got to meet you.”

Kira opens her eyes. “Is the world hanging in the balance really worth meeting me?”

Even in the darkness, Kira can see Jadzia smiling slowly, fondly.

“Let’s get some sleep,” she says, and slips under the water.

\---

“Ready?” Miles asks, and Rom nods. “All right, from your legs.”

They heave up the cannonball, carry it across the dock, and drop it in front of Jadzia. Kira can feel the thud through her boots.

“And that,” Miles says, wiping his brow, “is why you can’t load a cannon by yourself.”

“Okay,” Jadzia says. “You’re right, that’s out. So what can we take?”

“A fleet?” Julian says with an edge of bitterness.

“Julian-” Kira starts.

“No,” he says, getting to his feet. “How can you ask us to stand by and watch you do this?” There are dark circles under his eyes. He’s had the whole night to get to this point. “The two of you have no idea what you’ll find, are essentially going unarmed, and you want the rest of us to throw up our arms and say, ‘Great, good luck’? Are we sure you’re not still hypnotized?”

That cuts sharply enough to make Kira flinch, and Julian immediately backs off. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Kira looks out toward the sea. The air is humid and warm, the clouds black.

No one says anything for a few moments, until Odo chimes in. “If we sent an entire fleet, that would only serve to provoke Dukat into unleashing more power.” He looks down at Jadzia. “Is that right?”

She nods. “He’d incinerate a fleet without a second thought. But just us, alone? We’d be inconsequential.”

“And that’s exactly what we need to catch him off guard,” Kira finishes.

“What are you going to do once you get there?” Julian asks, softer this time. “How will you take him out?”

Every weapon these days needs a spark or a flame – guns, fireworks, bombs. If they’re going to be sailing into a hurricane, they’ll never be able to get a fuse lit. The only things they have left are harpoons.

“You steer, I jump into the water and get him?” Jadzia asks, getting comfortable with the weight of one of the longest harpoons they have.

“Whatever we have to do,” Kira says. 

It’s not a plan, but she’s not interested in waiting for death.

There are no hugs when they set sail, no goodbyes. Molly ties another ribbon in Jadzia’s hair while the rest of them load harpoons onto the deck.

“Ready?” Kira asks.

“Ready,” Jadzia responds.

The wind is at their backs, quickly filling out the sails.

Dukat is calling them.

\---

The rain slams down in sheets. The wind howls, but still takes them along a single path. Kira barely has to steer and they still travel in the same direction.

She is soaked through to her bones, with thunder filling her ears. It’s hard to gauge how much longer they have to go. They’ve been moving fast, but the relentless downpour has cast a mist all around, and it feels more as if they are in a void than out at sea.

“Hey,” Jadzia shouts over the storm. “What is that?”

Kira looks hard into the distance. For a moment, it’s all the same – nothing but white – but then her eyes settle on a dark spot in the middle. It grows taller and taller, like a tower, but there are no structures or land masses out here.

Or at least there aren’t supposed to be.

They come up on it fast, the sky a sickening green. The current is at its choppiest, and Kira struggles to keep the wheel straight.

Jadzia seems to sense something about their movements and peers over the side of the ship.

“Whirlpool,” she says. 

Kira squints up at the mountainous mass. What _is_ it?

Suddenly, there is a rumbling, and laughter so loud she and Jadzia cover their ears. The sound travels through her whole body, rattling her.

“You’ve really come.”

Even at this tone, so unnaturally deep, it’s not hard to tell who it is. But they don’t see him anywhere.

“Look up,” Dukat says.

The mass moves, branching off at its base into twisting shadows – no, not shadows. Giant, moving creatures. 

Giant tentacles.

Kira cranes her neck to see shots of swirling flame high above, and Dukat’s enormous, smiling face peers down at her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, spreading his huge arms, “to witness the birth of our new world.”

The ship lurches, and Kira looks at Jadzia, stunned.

Jadzia tears her eyes away from Dukat long enough to hold up one of the harpoons. “I don’t think this is going to work anymore.”

Kira might laugh, were Dukat not taller than any castle spire, any lighthouse in the world, and churning the waves himself.

“There has to be something we can do,” Kira shouts.

A massive tentacle rises up beside them, and comes splashing down with shattering force. A wave crests up over the ship, knocking them both to the deck.

“Now _I_ am the one who is stronger,” Dukat bellows. “Stronger than Benjamin Sisko, stronger than the Prophets themselves. I have become a god!”

Balls of fire plummet into the ocean, cutting through it like stone, burning the whole way down. The water bubbles and thrashes, rocking the ship.

A tentacle descends again, but it does not strike them.

“Come with me, Nerys,” Dukat says. “Come and take your place at the throne of the new world.”

The invitation renders her speechless, but the fury comes quick. The arrogance of such a thought, the cowardice of damning all creation for her own benefit – it fills her with a level of rage she has never known. She grabs one of the harpoons scattered across the deck, grips it tight, and sends it slicing through the air. It lodges in Dukat’s outstretched tentacle, which flinches and curls.

“How disappointing,” Dukat says, withdrawing his injured limb into the sea. “Then I regret that this is where you die.”

There is a tremendous shuddering, and another tentacle swings straight into the ship’s sails, shattering the mast in a shower of wood. The impact sends the ship careening in another direction, where it spins and spins until Kira manages to stop the wheel, the muscles in her arms screaming with the effort.

Dukat is laughing again, enthralled by the sight of the flames crashing into the water. 

Jadzia heaves herself up against the railing, dazed. Molly’s ribbon is gone, and for the first time, she looks truly spent. She has done so much, only to see it fall apart, and she has the rigid expression of someone who has bled out all they can, whose heart fails in their chest – someone who has accepted that death is coming.

Kira searches the ship, frantic. She suspects it’s not just the mast that’s gone; they are rocking back and forth with greater intensity. The deck is ruined, littered with holes and torn cloth. The bowsprit is broken at its end, jagged and sharp.

She freezes.

That’s it.

“Jadzia!” she says. “We have to ram him!” Kira pulls her up and points to the bowsprit.

Jadzia tenses. “We’ll never make it that close,” she says, and then comprehension lights in her eyes, and she jumps down onto the main deck. She finds a lone harpoon among the debris and leaps to the side of the ship with it.

Kira runs after her. “What are you doing?!”

“If he’s distracted, you might be able to get him.”

“You can’t go out there!”

“We’ll only have one shot as it is,” Jadzia says, “and not if I can’t get his attention.”

Now Kira is the one who feels as if death is coming, hollow and chilly. “Jadzia, please.” 

Jadzia braces on the edge. “You know what? It’s all right if you don’t believe it’ll work. I’ll believe it for both of us.” She turns to her and smiles. “Somebody smart told me something like that once.”

Kira’s chest aches, an indescribable pain. Jadzia prepares to jump.

“Wait!” Kira says. “Do you… do you know what jade looks like?” A fine time to ask, at the end of everything.

Jadzia shakes her head. “No.”

Kira smiles, her throat tight. “Then I’ll show it to you when this is over.”

Jadzia grins brightly, like she did on the day they met. “That’s a promise,” she says, hoisting the harpoon, and then she leaps over the side, diving into the choppy waves.

Kira runs back up the stairs, collapsing onto the wheel, holding it as tightly as she can.

She steers the ship along the path of the whirlpool, urging it closer to the center. She makes a first pass around Dukat while the waves rise farther and farther up. There is a point where the ship leaves the water and sails through the air, and Kira hangs on, willing it to stay upright as it crashes back down.

On the second pass, Dukat’s back is to her, his attention elsewhere.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks, looking down. He’s taken the bait. “What do you think you _can_ do?”

A tower of water bursts up toward the sky, and then another. 

“It’s a shame you and Benjamin could never understand this. But he’s not here now, is he?”

A swirl of fire snaps into a sharp, rigid line, diving like a bolt of lightning into to the sea.

Kira banks the ship hard to the left. She’s got to get in there, before it’s too late.

Dukat looks toward the sky as more flame arrows rain down. “The Prophets offer nothing but false hope,” he declares. “This is the ultimate gift.”

As Kira passes in front of him again, water rockets up in successive columns, so close and so fast that the droplets sting like rocks against her skin. She keeps her hands steady on the wheel.

She comes around for the third time, and there is little distance left. The whirlpool propels her toward Dukat.

He doesn’t notice her arrival until the last moment.

He begins to turn, and Kira shoves the wheel with all her strength. The bowsprit lines up with his heart and sinks inside.

Dukat gasps at the impact. He staggers backward, crying out, and his moaning cascades into something that can’t be defined: an unholy cacophony, screaming from thousands of voices, as fire streams from his body. His flesh disintegrates into black, blistering burns.

He lashes out with his tentacles, grabbing at the ship, slicing it in half and shearing off large chunks. The wheel drops and the deck bottoms out. There is nothing left to hold the ship together, and Kira feels herself floating down through the air.

She loses time. She is cold. The waves carry her.

No. Not the waves.

She turns her head, looking for Jadzia, but only feels herself falling again.

\---

There is water in her mouth. Kira coughs hard and her head throbs like never before.

“Easy, easy.”

She opens her eyes and sees Julian, a golden patch of evening light on his hair.

“If I had known you’d be awake, I would have waited,” he says. “Can you sit up? You need to have some water.”

It’s only then that Kira registers the sandy dryness in her mouth. She does want water, more than anything, but Julian takes the glass back from her far before she’s satisfied.

“I know,” he says, guiding her back against her pillows. “I know you’re thirsty, but you need to pace yourself.”

“Where-” Kira says, but her voice is a hoarse whisper. She clears her throat. “Where’s Jadzia?”

Julian sets her glass on the table and presses a warm cloth to her face. “I should give you a fresh bandage,” he says.

That’s not an answer to her question. Kira reaches out with a trembling hand and digs her nails into his arm. “Where is she?”

Julian won’t meet her eyes. “We don’t know,” he finally says. “She wasn’t with you when we found you.”

“That’s impossible,” Kira says. “There’s no way I could have made it back by myself.” The pounding of her heart thrums in her head.

“I don’t doubt that,” Julian says. “But we found you on the shore. Just you.”

No. No, it’s too much if Kira is the only one who’s come home.

“Odo’s had ships out, looking for her,” Julian continues. “They haven’t found anything yet.”

Kira turns her head and sees the bathtub, still here in her room, but empty.

“How long have I been asleep?” she asks.

Julian finishes wrapping the fresh bandage around her head. Again, he hesitates to answer her.

Her chest constricts. “How long, Julian?”

“Five days.”

Kira shuts her eyes. Five days, and no sign of Jadzia.

“Here,” Julian says, giving her the water glass, but her hands are shaking too much to take it. She leans forward, both hands on her head.

“I can’t remember what happened,” she says.

“It’s all right. Just sit back.”

There is a hard pain at the back of her throat, a desperate emptiness everywhere else.

“I’ll bring some soup,” Julian says. “I need you to start eating again.”

All she wants to do is sleep. The days are a haze of pain, sleep, and soup, and she goes through the motions as best she can, even though eating makes her want to vomit and the pain in her head endures no matter how much she rests.

When she is strong enough to leave her bed, she goes straight to the shore. She leans back against the rock, staring at the boats in the distance.

There are celebrations in town and she can hear the popping of fireworks every night. People want her to speak. The thought of all of it – the dancing, the cheering, the music that lasts all night – makes her furious. There is nothing to celebrate.

She didn’t bring any water out with her, and Julian will chastise her, but she thinks that even if he does, she won’t have any energy inside her to react to him.

She hears sand shifting beneath boots, and she knows from the distance between the steps that it’s Odo.

“Nerys,” he says softly.

“Someone should be here,” Kira says, “for when she comes back.”

It sounds as if Odo opens his mouth to say something else, but thinks better of it. Instead, he comes to sit beside Kira on the sand, silent.

After a while, there are more footsteps, and Julian appears with water. He doesn’t say anything, either, just hands her the glass and takes a seat.

And a while after that, Julian jumps when a cloak hits the back of his head.

“Somebody’s got to make sure he doesn’t catch cold,” Miles grumbles, and he sits.

Keiko eases down next to Kira and takes her hand in her own. Kira thinks her hand must feel ice cold, in contrast to Keiko’s warmth, but Keiko doesn’t let go.

Quark and Rom come out, too, and Rom’s eyes are red and puffy. He keeps sniffing.

“It’s too quiet without her here,” Quark says, unusually somber.

They all stay until the boats return to port in the dark. That desperate ache squeezes inside Kira’s chest. 

Keiko helps her stand as everyone brushes sand off their clothes. She is gentle as she guides Kira back to the castle, and Kira lets her lead her away.

\---

Quark bursts in, chest heaving.

“There’s something happening on the shore,” he manages, before he tears out of the room.

He’s right. In one spot, the water bubbles and froths like it’s boiling in a pot.

“What _is_ this?” Julian asks, peering over it, way too close.

“I don’t know,” Kira says, pulling him back. But they’re all going to find out – that, she knows.

The water blossoms up onto the sand, rising into a pillar. The more it bubbles, the more it forms into a solid shape. And then, with a light, effortless grace, it falls away, vanishing into the sand, and in its place stands Jadzia, again on human legs. She is so still, her eyes closed, and her dress sparkles like sunlight on the water.

Maybe, Kira thinks, she is still asleep, dreaming away while her body heals itself, but then Jadzia opens her eyes like she, too, has been asleep for many days. She sees Kira, sees the whole group of them, and her face brightens, warm and happy.

“Hi,” she says.

Kira goes to her, stumbling over a stone along the way, but it hardly seems to matter. She takes Jadzia’s face in both her hands.

“Is it really you?” she asks.

Jadzia looks from left to right and raises her eyebrows. “I think so.”

Kira laughs and collapses against Jadzia’s shoulder. Tears roll down her cheeks, and she does not try to stop them. 

“Hey,” Jadzia says. “I just got _out_ of the water.” She eases Kira upright, smiling affectionately as she brushes her tears away with her thumb.

There is so much to say, Kira can’t possibly know where to begin, but she hears the water rushing again. A man rises up behind Jadzia, a man with a long red tail, perched on a wave of water held in place by… she couldn’t begin to guess. He stands tall, noble and stately, holding a trident and-

And he has a goatee.

“Oh, everyone, allow me to introduce you to Benjamin,” Jadzia says, like it’s nothing at all. She gestures to Kira. “Benjamin, this is Queen Kira Nerys. Nerys, this is King Benjamin Sisko.”

“King… of the ocean?” Kira breathes.

“Of the ocean,” Sisko responds with a smile. “So, how does it feel to have saved all of existence?”

Kira is staring, open-mouthed, but she can’t stop.

“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Jadzia says.

“And I couldn’t have done it without you,” Sisko replies.

“Wait,” Kira says, shaking her head. “What _happened?_ What did we do?”

From the back, Miles raises a hand. “I’d like to know, too.” The rest of them nod in agreement.

“Is Dukat…” Kira says.

“Oh, he’s dead,” Sisko says. “Don’t worry about that.”

“But how… where were you?” Kira asks, looking at Jadzia.

At first, Jadzia seems like she doesn’t know how to answer, just as Kira can’t remember anything after falling into the water.

“I brought you home,” Sisko tells her. “You were in bad shape. I had to call in a few favors.”

“So the Prophets are free?” Jadzia asks. “We really did it?”

“Yes,” Sisko says. “But it was the two of you that got the job done.” He grins, so proud and content, like he knew this would be the outcome all along.

“So, wait,” Kira says to Jadzia. “You’re standing next to me; where’s your tail?”

“Oh,” Jadzia says. “That. Well…” She pauses and looks away. “I was thinking, maybe I could… stay like this.”

Stay a human? Forever? But why, with her magical world underwater, with her magical Prophets and merpeople and whatever else is down there, why would she ever want to stay here?

“You’re sure this is what you want?” Sisko asks. “It’ll be the other way around now – your mermaid form will be the temporary one. Your real form will stay human.”

“I know,” Jadzia says.

Kira grabs Jadzia by her shoulders. “Are you serious? You don’t really want to leave your _home?_ ” After everything she’s done to protect it, how could she bear to leave?

“It must sound like I haven’t given this a lot of thought,” Jadzia says.

“It doesn’t!”

Jadzia laughs. She takes Kira’s hands and holds them tightly. “Being here with all of you is something that I’m not so sure I want to give up.” She leans in closer and says, just loud enough for only Kira to hear, “Being here with _you_ is something I’m not so sure I want to give up.”

With her? 

With Kira? 

Forever?

She’s serious. She’s really serious.

“If you’re not-” Jadzia says, but Kira grabs her and kisses her. 

Being here with Jadzia isn’t something Kira wants to give up, either. Not ever.

“What the…” Quark says. “Who could have seen that coming?”

Odo grumbles under his breath. “Anyone with working vision.”

Kira looks at Sisko over Jadzia’s shoulder. “She can really stay?”

He nods. 

Jadzia goes to him, and just like she did with Kira, she holds his hands. The trident stays upright in the water beside him.

“You’ll come visit, right?”

“Any time you call.” Sisko sighs, and brings Jadzia into a tight hug. “I’m going to miss you, old man.”

“You just said you’ll come visit all the time,” Jadzia says. “You don’t have to miss me.”

Sisko retakes his trident, and surveys everyone on the shore, at the new life Jadzia has chosen. He grins and chuckles, and then the water sweeps over him, and he disappears beneath the waves.

“‘Old man’?” Kira asks.

“Hmm,” Jadzia says. “I guess I never told you about mermaid life spans.”

The others come closer, and Molly runs up beside them and grabs Jadzia’s hand. “You’re really staying?”

Jadzia kneels down. “Yes,” she says, grinning. “But now that I think about it, I just remembered I lost your ribbon. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Molly says. “I have loads.”

Quark shoves his way to the front of the group. “So the two of you…” His eyes narrow.

“Quark, are you jealous?” Jadzia asks.

“Yes.”

Jadzia runs her hand along the back of Kira’s neck. “That’s too bad.”

Kira wants to stay in Jadzia’s arms for the rest of her life, if she’d let her. She wants to marry her, in a real wedding, one that they both want.

She asks her later, when it’s just the two of them out on the balcony in her room, and everyone else has gone to sleep.

“I mean,” Kira says, “you don’t have to. We haven’t really known each other all that long, and there’s so much you need to get used to. Actually, it’s kind of crazy that I even asked, and-”

Jadzia puts her finger under Kira’s chin and guides her lips toward hers.

So, Kira thinks, her mouth opening easily under Jadzia’s, this must be a ‘yes’.

\---

“What are you doing in here?!” Miles exclaims. “You can’t look at her before you go up there; you’ll curse the whole wedding!”

Kira leans back in her chair, untangling her epaulettes. “I think after taking down pure evil, we’ll be okay.”

“Fine, but if we spring a leak, I’m not going to be the one fixing it.”

“That’s okay,” Rom says, smiling from ear to ear. “I’ll fix it.”

Jadzia leans into the open porthole off to the side. “Do you want to sit with the guests? We can get you a tub.”

On the other side, Sisko pauses, thinking. There is a crowd of mermaids out in the water below. 

“What’s a tub?” Sisko finally says.

Molly comes to Kira, tugging on her sleeve. “Mommy won’t stop messing with the bouquet.”

“Keiko,” Kira says. “It was already gorgeous an hour ago!”

Keiko nudges a rose petal, pushes a group of white blossoms. “I don’t know…”

Jadzia sweeps in behind her, her dress swishing along the floor, and plucks the bouquet from her hands. “It’s beautiful and I don’t want you to change it.” She closes her eyes and inhales the scent of the flowers, sighing happily.

“Jadzia,” Quark whines. “Make your move.”

Jadzia puts the bouquet aside to pick up her cards. “I thought I already did.”

“Now _here’s_ the real wedding curse,” Kira says.

“No, no, no, we’ll be quick.” Jadzia sets a card down. “Because I’m about to win.”

Quark plucks a card from the center. “Oh, no, you don’t.”

Odo and Julian poke their heads inside. Julian grins and says, “I think it’s time.”

Jadzia spreads her cards out on the table, face up. Quark throws his up in the air.

Kira goes to the porthole. There really are a lot of mermaids out there, and Sisko is still on his wave, peeking in. 

“We’ll see you upstairs?” she asks him.

“Absolutely,” Sisko replies, smiling wide.

When Kira heads to the door, Jadzia is murmuring something to Odo, and his face turns deep crimson. He huffs and retreats upstairs.

“Don’t torture him,” Kira chides. “The chef alone nearly made him burst a blood vessel this morning.”

Jadzia chuckles, full of mischief. “I can’t help it; he’s so easy.”

“Come now,” Kira says, puffing out her chest and deepening her voice. “Such behavior does not become a queen.”

“That’s right,” Jadzia gasps. “I’m going to be a queen. Hey, Benjamin! Did you hear that? I’m about to be royalty, too!”

“Always knew you had it in you!” Sisko calls back.

She and Kira start up the long flight of stairs to the upper deck. 

“What do you think you’ll do for your first act as queen?” Kira asks.

Jadzia puts a finger to her chin, deep in concentration. “Mandatory parties,” she decides. “Every night.”

“If the whole town’s hungover every day, we’ll never get anything done.”

“But at least we’ll know how to have a good time.”

When they are almost to the door, Jadzia stops Kira with a hand on her wrist.

“Hey,” she says. “Weren’t you supposed to show me some jade?”

Kira sighs. “You couldn’t wait fifteen minutes? It’s in the _ring._ ”

They laugh so much now, more than Kira ever has in all her life. It’s hard to believe it wasn’t always like this.

There are things Jadzia will discuss with longing – turning in circles deep in the water, the complete relaxation of every muscle from sleeping inches off the sand, communing with schools of fish as they spiral around the sea.

But then she will hear the bells ringing in town, and she will close her eyes and breathe deep.

The one thing she never expresses is regret.

“Come on,” Jadzia says. “Let’s get married.”

They open the doors together and walk out into the sun.


End file.
